Mark Zuckerberg just made a big investment in a startup that pays young people in Africa to learn code

Chibuzor Obiora didn’t have any previous coding experience
when he decided to apply to Andela, a programming school with
campuses in Kenya and Nigeria, which places its students
("fellows") with tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and IBM.

Obiora had
been looking for work in Lagos, Nigeria, after completing a
degree in electrical engineering and a 6-month stint as a local
TV anchor. Andela popped up in his Twitter feed.

He didn’t know much about Andela,
or that he’d eventually be one of the 0.7% of applicants
chosen. But he was intrigued enough to complete the online test,
and to remind himself that he loved doing the type of
problem-solving it asked. He was also good at it — more than
good.

Distributed programming

There is a shortage of software
developers in the US. That's created a boom in coding
“bootcamps,” which charge tens of thousands of dollars for a few
months of training, and it has increased outsourcing to
developers all over the world (especially Eastern Europe and
India). Demand for coders, in other words, is huge.

There are also a lot of smart
young people in Africa who don’t get the opportunity to become
programmers. Obiora explains it like
this: parents in Nigeria want their talented kids to become
doctors, or engineers, or something established. That’s fine, he
says, but software development should be on the table too.
There's an untapped supply.

The for-profit company runs a
four-year program, the goal of which is to produce world-class
developers. The first six months are a crash course in
programming skills, and the last three and a half years are a
full-time remote apprenticeship with American tech companies.
Those companies pay Andela, which in turn pays its fellows an
above-average local wage (for a developer) during the duration of
the program.

Andela’s model has snagged some
notable believers in the tech community including Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg, whose Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is leading a
$24 million Series B funding round in the company, with
participation from GV (Google Ventures). It's $48 billion CZI's
first major investment.

"Companies get access to great
developers, and developers in Africa get the opportunity to use
their skills and support their communities," Zuckerberg said in a
statement.

The money will help Andela
kickstart its expansion across Africa, and Johnson says he’s
planning to announce a third city by the year’s end (right now
Andela is in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lagos, Nigeria).

Johnson says his partner
companies have been pleased with the quality of work the fellows
are producing, and that no one is dropping them. That doesn't
mean there aren't some challenges. Obiora, who is
currently working with job search startup The
Muse, says a major one is that communicating with the
US teams can be difficult at first. “You can never communicate
enough,” Obiora says. But companies are
increasingly using off-site programmers, so they aren’t
completely unprepared for this. You just have to get into the
workflow, Obiora explains.

"41% of developers in the US are
distributed or work from home in some form [at least one day a
week]," Johnson says. The revolution is already happening, and
Andela wants to make sure Africa is part of it as well.

Courtesy of Jeremy Johnson

Obiora says he
doesn’t know what he’ll do when the program concludes, whether
he’ll go to work for a larger tech company or build his own
startup, but he wants to work in the social impact space, and
stay in Nigeria.

“Software development is a tool,
but it’s up to you what you do with it,” Obiora
says.

Something he thinks software
could help change is Lagos’ horrible traffic problem, which he
mentions at two separate times. There are a few startups trying
to tackle the problem with things like carpooling, he says.
“Those are the [startups] I cheer for.”

Even if Obiora
hasn’t found the exact problem he wants to take aim at yet, he
has found his language of choice. “Python is my favorite,” he
says without hesitation. “Once I started, it makes me feel
happy,” he continues. He doesn’t know why. It just does.